A Mythical Misstep: The new Percy Jackson show lacked in writing

I think I speak for everyone when I say this — I wanted to like the new “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” show.

I was one of the millions of kids who eagerly read everything Rick Riordan ever touched: “Percy Jackson,” “The Kane Chronicles,” “Heroes of Olympus,” every single series and the crossover books in between. Anyone who didn’t read the crossover “Demigods and Magicians” isn’t a real fan.

Those original five books are a masterpiece of young adult fiction, and for over a decade they’ve brought kids into a magical world — yes, the world of gods and titans and monsters, but also the world of reading itself. 

And after a mediocre pair of movies, it seemed like it was finally time for Percy Jackson to fulfill his final prophecy and claim his throne next to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in book series adaptation history. 

It seemed like it.

The season finale came out on Disney Plus on Jan. 30, and now that all eight episodes are out, it’s fair to say the show is mediocre at best. 

The plot revolves around middle schooler Percy Jackson who discovers Greek myths are real and that his dad is Poseidon, the god of the sea. After traveling to Camp Half-Blood, where demigods live, he goes on a quest with his friends Annabeth and Grover to prevent a war among the gods while dodging monsters and uncovering secrets.

The first thing that bothered me was the weird iMovie-like cut-to-black transitions that plagued the first few episodes and then for some reason faded away as the show went on. Not only were the transitions disruptive but they weren’t consistent either, as if the whole budget was spent on set design and they had no money left to pay the editors.

The main cast — Walker Scobell as Percy, Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth and Aryan Simhadri as Grover was mostly promising, with Simhadri nailing his delivery and Scobell poorly portraying emotion. However, it’s hard to gauge their potential acting abilities given their age and more significantly, the god-awful writing.

The writing was immensely painful and stilted, comprised heavily of mythological monologue that puts me to sleep faster than swallowing a whole bottle’s worth of melatonin. The remaining bits of cringy one-liners had me wishing the bottle was thrown at my head instead.

Despite this, the gods in the show act powerfully, and the pacing becomes better towards the end of the season. The strongest part of the show has to be the stunning sets and cinematography, which are truly enjoyable in their own right — but only if I mute the TV so I don’t have to listen to the dialogue. 

I feel like I’m hallucinating when I read the reviews and see overwhelmingly positive feedback — hovering around an 8 out of 10. What’s even more reality-breaking is when everyone I talk to seems to defend it — theoretical potential isn’t a reason to like the show, and neither is denying its real deficiencies.

Lots of people have been screaming at me, arguing that the show is accurate to the books. I don’t remember Percy peeing in the bushes in the books, but OK. That could very well be true, but given that most teenagers watching the show were 8-year olds when reading the books, they could have scaled up the quality at least a little bit instead of committing to mediocrity. 

Maybe the show has potential but with how the first season went, the writers are going to have to work for it. Personally, I think Riordan is off his rocker, but I would love to be proven otherwise.